Side Show (5 page)

"We're going Heggie hunting," Keye had said.

"We're hunting them?" Joe had managed while he struggled to get his mind fully alert.

"There are Heggies close. Looks like a mounted infantry company and a tank company moving together, not more than twelve hundred meters out from us. Check your mapboard. Their position and course are plotted in red."

Joe ordered his platoon up while he fumbled for his mapboard, switched it on, and adjusted the coordinates to center the 13th's position. He knew he should have done that earlier, as soon as they stopped, but he had forgotten.

As soon as he had the Heggie troops on the board, he linked to the platoon's noncoms and told them what was in the wind.

"We're going on foot, ain't we?" Sauv Degtree of third squad asked.

"Lieutenant didn't say different, so I'd say so," Joe replied. "They're too close. They'd hear the Heyers as soon as they fired up."

"What's the plan?" Ezra asked. "We gonna have any heavy support?"

"I'll let you know as soon as I find out," Joe promised. "Just get everybody ready to move, two minutes ago."

The first sergeant came on the company command channel then. "First platoon on point. Second leads the right flank, third the left. We've got twenty minutes to get into position before the Havocs start firing." He hesitated before he added, "And, if we're lucky, a few Wasps."

"Anything to take care of those Novas," Joe said. He was thinking aloud, forgetting that he was on an open circuit.

"Don't count on them wasting all of them," Walker said. "We've got plenty of Vrerchs. Use them if you have to." The Vrerch was a shoulder-operated video-guided missile, equally adept for surface-to-surface or surface-to-air use. "We may have to stop a few trucks as well. Those Heggie mudders are riding."

"Hope they've been as uncomfortable riding as we have," a soft, anonymous voice said. There were no laughs.

"Let's just see that they walk home, and not many of them," Walker said. "And be careful out there. Third recon is marking the Heggies. George Company will be moving around in front of them as soon as the big guns open up. Now, move 'em out."

Joe had been watching his men form up during the conversation. There was no loose chat among them, not even complaints about the weather. Even though they were dead tired, the men got their weapons ready and assembled by fire team and squad. A word over the platoon channel and a quick point set them on the right course. The rest of Echo started moving as well. Keye, his small headquarters staff, and the heavy weapons platoon would be in the center of the wedge.

Echo didn't have far to travel before they left the cover of the trees they had camped under. Close to the woods, the grass was short, no more than knee-high. Within another fifty meters, though, the grass rose chest-high, or more. In some areas, the men were walking through grass whose flowering heads towered above their helmets.

It provided a deceptive sense of security. Grass tops waving in ways that they shouldn't could pinpoint men as readily as a strobing beacon overhead. And soggy grass wouldn't move back into position as quickly. They would leave a clear trail to any observer in the air.

"Watch your intervals," Joe warned. That was such a routine admonishment that he scarcely thought about it. "Keep those columns narrow. Don't bend any more of this grass than necessary."

For the third time in five minutes, Joe glanced at the power gauge on his rifle. The needle hadn't moved a whisker. Since he hadn't fired the weapon, the needle shouldn't have moved. He dragged a sleeve across his visor to get the water off of it. Working in the rain, that could be a frequent chore.

Lieutenant Keye passed along word for the platoon sergeants to listen in on one of the tactical radio channels. Someone from one of the recon platoons was providing a running commentary of Heggie movements. The reccers were close enough to give head counts on the number of Heggies in some of the trucks.

Almost like they're hanging on the blower skirts,
Joe thought. He shook his head, just slightly amazed at how well the reccers did their job.

Echo didn't need the full twenty minutes to get into position. Seventeen minutes after Keye gave the noncoms their orders, the company moved into a skirmish line and started advancing more slowly. Two of the enemy tanks were in sight, less than two hundred meters away. The main Heggie column was just beyond those Novas and moving slowly. It looked as if they were stopping.

"Down!" Joe told his platoon, relaying an order from the lieutenant. "Wait for the Havocs."

Joe took the safety off on his zipper as soon as he had a comfortable prone firing position. At this range, the Armanoc wouldn't be of much use except to suppress accurate enemy small arms fire. When wire was whizzing around your head, you couldn't tell how far away it was coming from, and the Dupuy rocket-assist rifles, the snipers' "cough" gun, could provide enough casualties to keep the enemy from being certain.

The wait for the start of the artillery barrage seemed far longer than three minutes. Joe concentrated on breathing regularly. It was too easy to forget, to hold his breath. Experience did not preclude pre-battle jitters. Joe
knew
what the next minutes might bring.

Finally, he heard the sounds of the Havocs firing. There was no way in the universe to put a silencer on a 200mm cannon. Even at a distance of several kilometers, the sound of thirty-two howitzers firing at once could be heard. Joe suspected that even the Heggies would be able to hear over the noises made by the tanks and trucks they were riding in.

Maybe the big guns will get all of these Heggies,
Joe thought, knowing it was wishful thinking. The Havocs might be accurate and lethal, but the Heggie trucks and tanks were still moving, if slowly, and they were dispersed enough to give them
some
chance. There always seemed to be work left for the mudders. No matter how massive the artillery preparation, some soldiers always survived... often, a majority of them.

The prairie in front of Echo erupted in a sudden taste of hell. The Havoc rounds made little noise coming in, and it was only in the last fraction of a second that there was even a chance of getting a fleeting glimpse of one of the shells. Thirty-two suspended plasma rounds went off together, no more than a second separating the first from the last. Several rockets, slower and more easily visible, came in. It looked as if at least two Wasps had come to contribute to the fight. Fiery clouds rose and expanded. Joe ducked just as he saw one of the tanks explode. The turret seemed to rise five meters above the chassis below it. For a few seconds, after the first thunder of the explosions, Joe could hear nothing but a hollow ringing in his ears. As that cleared, he could hear the crackling sound of burning grass.
That
didn't last long. The prairie grass was too damp to burn well.

But not all of the fires went out. There were tanks and trucks burning. Their hydrogen fuel might burn without visible flames, but there was more to the vehicles than fuel.

"Let's go!" Keye ordered over the company all-hands channel. Joe repeated the order on his platoon channel, even though 2nd platoon was already getting to its feet.

Moving forward, Joe could see the damage that had already been inflicted on the Heggies. All five of the Nova tanks were out of action, destroyed or burning. But only two of the twelve trucks appeared to have been hit. Joe could see soldiers pouring out of most of the others, diving into the grass.

"We've still got a fight here," Joe warned his men as he let off a short burst toward the nearest enemy truck. Heggies started firing as well.

"Get some RPGs in there, quick," Joe said. Rocket-propelled grenades. The enemy was in range for those. One man in each fire team carried several of the disposable tubes. Even before any of the men in 2nd platoon managed to comply, there were grenades arcing toward the enemy trucks from some of the other platoons.

"Follow the grenades in," Joe ordered. "By squad and fire team."

Within each squad, one fire team hurried forward a few meters while the other team covered them with enough wire to suppress enemy fire—to at least keep it from being overly accurate. Then the other team moved, leapfrogging. All of the line platoons were operating the same way.

And Echo started to take casualties.

Joe moved with Mort Jaiffer's fire team. The second time they moved forward, Joe saw someone fall in third squad. The man got back up, staggered forward two steps, then went down again. Before Joe, or anyone else, could call, third squad's medic was at the man's side. After a hurried examination, the medic made a thumbs-up gesture: the wound wasn't serious.

Joe had scarcely got back to his feet the next time before he felt wire hitting him. Spent wire. At ranges still well over a hundred meters, it took a lot of concentrated wire, or perfectly placed wire, to do serious damage. Accord net armor could prevent most penetration at that range. But the tiny bits of wire, smaller than staples, could still hurt. They could still leave nasty bruises.

Joe went down again, moving forward another couple of meters on his hands and knees. Around him, the rest of the fire team was doing the same. Some Heggie gunner had them perfectly sighted. Getting down for a moment was the best way to throw off his aim.

The other team went forward. More RPG rounds were sent ahead. A few came back—Heggie grenades. There was nothing to do for that but hug the ground and hope that you were out of the kill zone of the nearest blasts. The closer to the ground you could get, the narrower the kill radius of a Schlinal grenade was. Most of the shrapnel went up and out in a rapidly expanding cone.

Three more enemy trucks had been hit. Joe glanced skyward and saw one of the Wasps climbing toward the clouds, streaking back toward the main Accord lines. It quickly disappeared from sight.
We're on our own again,
he thought. He blinked a couple of times. As long as the enemy tanks were accounted for, it shouldn't matter. Infantry versus infantry, and it looked as if the 13th had the advantage of numbers, with two line companies and two recon platoons closing in on a single company of Heggies.

—|—

"Get that heat tarp back in place," Eustace Ponks said as he popped his hatch. The Havocs had moved a couple of kilometers after finishing their part in the attack on the Heggie column. They were under trees again, but not in the same place they had been before. On the other side of the turret, Simon was getting out as quickly as Eustace. In the back, the other two members of the crew were already out, starting to unfold the thermal tarp. The engines had been run, the gun had been fired. For the next hour or more, the Fat Turtle would glow in infrared, bright enough to be spotted from orbit.

The tarp was lightweight, but bulky enough that it took some handling. The men worked as quickly as possible. As soon as they had the tarp spread, they popped pegs into the ground at the corners and hurried off toward a tree twenty-five meters from the gun, as much out of the light rain as possible. The thermal tarps were not quite 100 percent effective, and a Havoc was too tempting a target standing still for its crew to feel comfortable staying in, or close to, it.

The men didn't bother to dig foxholes. They were as far away from the action as anyone in the 13th could be at the moment, with a lot of mudders between them and the enemy. The rest of Basset Battery was spread around them at the edges of the wooded area, no gun
too
close to any of the others.

"This can't be what we came out here for," Simon said over the crew's private radio channel. Even though they were close enough to speak directly to one another, they routinely used their helmet radios, whispering. Gun crews didn't have the same sort of battle helmets that the infantry used. Gun helmets had no visors. In a Havoc, they didn't need night-vision systems or visual overlays.

"Hard telling what we really came out here for," Eustace replied.

"They said more'n a thousand klicks," Jimmy Ysinde protested. "We ain't come half of that."

"Whatever. We'll find out soon enough. We hit those Heggies. The Heggies will hit back just as fast. You can bet on that." Eustace rarely worried about anything beyond the needs of his own gun or, occasionally, of the entire battery when they were operating together. Mostly, he saw other guns as dangerous companions. The more Havocs that operated close together, the more inviting a target they made.

"Sure was nice while nobody was botherin' us," Simon said. "Now we've waved a red flag for 'em. Even if we took out this whole batch, they'll send more after. Boems, probably." Artillerymen hated enemy aircraft. They had no defense against air power.

"Wouldn't have lasted anyway," Eustace said. "Soon enough, they'd have come after us. That must be what that convoy was out here for." He got up to his knees and looked around. They were too far away from the fighting to hear anything but the occasional soft crump of a grenade or rocket exploding.

Eustace was looking directly at Basset one, Lieutenant Ritchey's gun, when it exploded. Ritchey and his crew weren't in their Havoc, though. Like the other crews, they had put distance between them and their gun as soon as they had covered it.

"Move out," Ritchey ordered over the battery channel. "Forget us. We're going to join the colonel and headquarters. Get the rest of the guns moving.
Now!
"

The crewmen of the Fat Turtle were on their feet with Ritchey's first word, running to their Havoc, looking into the air as if they might see an enemy shell coming in.

"There must be more'n that one batch out here," Eustace shouted at his men. "Recon said we got all of the Novas with that bunch."

"Tell me about it," Simon muttered. He was panting heavily already. "I knew the crap was gonna fly."

"Get the tarp stowed. Simon, you get inside and fire up the engines." Eustace was already ripping one corner of the thermal shield free. He didn't worry about the pegs. If they came with the tarp, fine; if not, they'd make do the next time. There was no time to fold the tarp. It was simply wadded up and crammed into its small storage locker.